HUNTERS SHOULD DO MORE OF IT

Thinking Grizzly

By Bill Schneider, 10-25-06

	Photo courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

Big game hunters, it's your time to rule the forests. The general big game seasons are underway throughout the New West. Thousands of hunters are crawling around grizzly country in the predawn darkness, alone, as quietly as possible and smelling like stale elk pee. If successful, they fill the wind with the smell of high-quality grizzly food.

Is this a problem?

Oh, yes, and here are a few examples of what happens.

• In October 1995, two British Columbia hunters, William Caspell and Shane Fumerton, shot a large bull elk on the Continental Divide on the Alberta-British Columbia border. A time-delayed snapshot from a stump showed two happy hunters with their prize. But shortly after the photo was taken, they were both dead. Two days later, officials shot a small female grizzly and two cubs that refused to give up their elk carcass, even when hazed with a helicopter. Three bears, in biologist-speak, were "removed from the population."
  
  
• In October 2001, Timothy Hilston shot an elk on the Blackfoot-Clearwater Game Range, northeast of Missoula, almost within sight of U.S. Highway 200. While he field dressed the elk, a female grizzly and her two cubs came to claim it, and he died a slow, tragic death. The next day, three grizzly bears died a fast, tragic death.
  
  
• In October 2004, Wally Cash was hunting elk near Moran in northwestern Wyoming, He was “sneaking along” and crested a small rise and saw a grizzly only a few feet away. The bear instantly jumped him, punching a quarter-sized hole in his skull and biting his hand before running off. Later, tracks in the snow told investigators that the female grizzly and her cubs had been feeding on an elk carcass Cash and his hunting partners had left out overnight. In addition to being surprised by a stealthy hunter, the grizzly was protecting her cubs and newfound food source—a classic bad three strikes against you if you're an elk hunter. This time, no bears died.
  
  
• Also in October 2004, Weston Scott was after elk in Moccasin Creek in northwestern Wyoming. He heard rustling in a thick timber and thought it was an elk, but instead, a 600-pound grizzly charged out of the thicket. He managed to get off a hip shot, but missed. He had bear spray, but didn’t have time to reach for it. The bear mauled Scott’s face horribly and inflicted minor injuries before running away. A few minutes later, one of Scott’s hunting partners killed the bear.
  
  
• In May 2005, Jebb Lackey was bow hunting for black bear in thick brush along a stream noisily cascading out of the mountains near Hungry Horse Reservoir in northwestern Montana. “I decided to stop on the side of the creek and take a leak,” he said. “I was buttoning my pants up and I looked to my right and the bear was already at full charge about 10 yards away. I saw two cubs running away in the opposite direction.”
  Lackey reached for his .44 magnum, but his belt was still unbuckled. “It wouldn't have done me a bit of good," he recalled. “She had the draw on me. I got caught with my pants down, literally.” He said the bear hit him “like a ton of bricks." The bear knocked Lackey flat on his face and put its front paws “directly on my shoulder blades and put her nose directly on the back of my neck and made some growling, gurgling sounds. And just as I thought this is it, I'm going to die, she took off after her cubs.” While walking back to his truck and thinking about what to do with his “second chance,” Lackey decided to continue to hunt, no more bear hunting. “I can't justify going after them with that intent anymore. If she wanted me dead, there was nothing to stop her. I take it like she let me live.”

There were more incidents, but this should be enough to make the point. It's dangerous out there, both for hunters and bears. Every year, the big bear expands into new range, into areas where hunters have not had to think grizzly, and many of them key on hunters as a provider of quality food, namely gut piles and carcasses. Plus, during autumn, bears are hyperphagic--in a physiological panic to put on enough fat to survive a five-month fast while under a snowbank in their winter dens.

One could, in fact, argue that hunters do everything possible to seduce grizzlies into an encounter, so is it a miracle there aren’t many more dead and injured hunters?

Perhaps, but two things keep the number of incidents down. First, most hunters are extremely aware of their surroundings, and this training and built-in alertness prevents many encounters. Second, the grizzly deserves praise for being so incredibly aware of its surroundings that the bear can detect and avoid the most stealthy hunters stalking through the night, making no noise, and reeking of artificial buck scent.

The punch line is, hunters must think grizzly, both to protect themselves and to prevent incidents leading to the death of bears. The species is making a nice comeback from the brink of extinction and may even be removed from the protections of the Endangered Species Act, so hunters need to do their part to keep human-caused mortality low.

Grizzlies have probably always keyed on hunters as a source of food, either gut piles or unwatched carcasses. Now, it's more serious because we have more bears in more places. In addition, some biologists believe each generation of bears gets smarter about getting food from hunters, now even interpreting a rifle shot as a dinner bell.

Hunters should think grizzly everywhere in western Montana, northwestern Wyoming and in Idaho next to Yellowstone and on the panhandle near Canada. But the most serious problem is heavily hunted areas like on the north and south edge of Yellowstone Park in the Blackfoot Valley and Rocky Mountain Front in Montana. Like it or not, the opening of hunting season is no different than the salmon run starting up in Alaska. Bears habitually migrate to popular big game hunting areas expecting to find food.

Based on the still-low number of bloody encounters, grizzlies are either remarkably tolerant of those thousands of smelly hunters or intelligent enough to avoid almost all of them. But the trend, more hunters and more bears in the same spots, should tell us that we should no longer be nonchalant about the risk.

I couldn't find a good online source of specific advice for hunters, but here is a list I paraphrased the following tips from my recent book, Where the Grizzly Walks.

• When hiking to a favorite hunting spot during darkness, use a flashlight.
  
• Select a safe campsite and keep it clean.
  
• Avoid hunting alone.
  
• When bugling for elk, be alert. Bugling not only attracts elk, but also bears.
  
• Carry bear pepper spray, keep it instantly available, and know how to use it.
  
• If you see a carcass or gut pile left by another hunter, avoid it.
  
• If you have a successful hunt, field-dress the animal and get it out of the backcountry as quickly as possible. Avoid leaving the carcass overnight if possible.
  
• Use a sheet of heavy plastic to quickly separate the gut pile 100 yards or more from the carcass.
  
• Don’t leave your gut pile near a trail or campsite where a bear might claim it and create circumstances that could threaten other hunters or hikers using the trail or campsite.
  
• Avoid dragging a carcass into camp. A bear might follow the scent trail.
  
• If you must leave a carcass unattended, hang it 10 feet off the ground (required in some national forests) even if you have to cut the meat into smaller pieces to facilitate hanging. You can also purchase lightweight electric fences to string around the carcass.
  
• Hang carcasses at least 100 yards from any campsite or trail (also required in some national forests). If not possible to hang the carcass, cache it at least 100 yards from camp.
  
• If you can’t hang the carcass, leave it on the ground in an open area where you can observe it from a safe distance when you return to claim it.
  
• Leave an article of clothing (ripe with human scent) on or near the carcass or pour ammonia around the carcass to deter bears. Some outfitters have their clients urinate in a circle around a carcass.
  
• Noisily return to the carcass upwind, so the bear can get your scent before you get there. Thoroughly scan the area with binoculars before approaching the carcass. If you see that the carcass has been moved or partially buried, a bear may have claimed it. If so, abandon it and leave the area immediately. Do not attempt to shoot or harass the bear that has claimed your carcass.

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